{"product_id":"naples-44-a-world-war-ii-diary-of-occupied-italy-1","title":"Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy","description":"\u003cb\u003eRe-released eighty years after liberation with a new foreword from Alex Kershaw, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Longest Winter \u003c\/i\u003eand Resident Historian of the WWII Memorial. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e From the author Graham Greene called \"one of our best writers, not of any particular decade but of our century,\" comes a masterpiece about a war-ravaged city under occupation \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, \u003ci\u003eNaples '44\u003c\/i\u003e is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose \"temporary\" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through daily. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Norman Lewis is one of the greatest twentieth-century British writers and \u003ci\u003eNaples '44\u003c\/i\u003e is his masterpiece. A lyrical, ironic, and detached account of a tempestuous, byzantine, and opaque city in the aftermath of war.\" -- Will Self\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Alex Kershaw, Norman Lewis","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46348549554412,"sku":"9780306835254","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0684\/1791\/3068\/files\/9780306835254_3fb6c8ee-cbf9-4fa3-af73-074ba1addba8.jpg?v=1744132055","url":"https:\/\/intl.allstora.com\/products\/naples-44-a-world-war-ii-diary-of-occupied-italy-1","provider":"Allstora","version":"1.0","type":"link"}